Sanders' Social Media outreach wins award

Posted
Tuesday, April 29, 2014 10:22 am

Press Release

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was one of only seven senators recognized today with a Gold Mouse Award from the Congressional Management Foundation for his outreach to constituents using Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.

The Gold Mouse Awards "provide guidance to Members of Congress on using the Internet to enhance communication and promote citizen engagement by identifying best practices that can serve as models," according to the foundation announcement.

The foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on improving congressional operations and enhancing citizen engagement.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) was also recognized with an award in the same category.

The Washington Post "Wonkblog," meanwhile, reported on Monday that Sanders is "at the top of the list" among all members of Congress for engaging followers on Facebook. The social media site's "talking about this" feature now tracks interest in a page by counting the number of unique users who have liked a page, liked a particular post, commented on something, shared a post, responded to an invitation or otherwise reacted to something on the Facebook page during the previous seven-day period.

"Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders has had over 288,000 people talking about him on Facebook in the past seven days, putting him at the top of this list," the Post reported. In addition to besting other members of Congress, Sanders' Facebook had more people "talking about this" as of Monday afternoon than the White House Facebook page, which at the same time had 283,720 people "talking about this."

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